The World Ahead
by Vontar
Summary: The year is 1918. For the past two decades, tensions between the great empires of Europe have simmered. When Aleksandar, Prince of Hohenberg and third in line to the Austro-Hungarian throne, is forced to flee after his home is attacked, he will find that there are many forces arrayed against him, leaving him in the direst of situations with the unlikeliest of allies.


**A/N: **Italics are non-English languages. For this chapter, italics denote German.

* * *

Sometimes, Alek wished he had been born a normal man. Maybe a shoemaker in Salzburg, toiling away his days in the workshop with a sense of self-assurance in his work as he strove for quality and fine craftsmanship. Or perhaps a baker in Vienna, selling his fresh loaves of bread and buns to smiling passerby on the street before returning to a small, but warm home every night. He was far wealthier and far more powerful than either the Salzburgian shoemaker or the Viennese baker would ever be in their lifetimes, but they in turn would also be free of the heavy responsibilities he carried from birth. It was a trade that Alek had considered before and found not unattractive, especially on a day such as this one.

Still, at the end of this well-practiced routine, he knew that it was nothing more than a daydream, and so Archduke Aleksander of Austria, Prince of Hohenberg and third in line to the Austro-Hungarian throne, returned to the document he should have been reading, leaving his dreams behind for the world as it was in the year of our Lord 1918.

Alek looked back down at the dense stack of papers he held in his hands. It was a fairly standard report from the XV. Army Corps headquarters stationed in Sarajevo. Just a few years earlier, there had been a notable assassination attempt against his father, the former Archduke Franz Ferdinand, that had led to both of his parents receiving wounds, his father's being quite grievous and almost fatal. Still, they had both survived, and after his father had fully recovered and resumed his duties, he was given ceremonial oversight over the XV. Army Corps by Emperor Franz Joseph himself since it was the unit stationed out of Sarajevo and had failed to ensure his protection. His father had thought it was some sort of double-sided gesture, since it gave him no real power – the unit still answered solely to the General Staff in Vienna – and added additional responsibilities to his already long list of duties in exchange for illusion of more power. Now that Alek was Archduke, he received the weekly report, which seemingly stretched into oblivion as far as its length was concerned, and he was expected to comment on it with no real upside.

A knock at the door startled Alek from his vain attempt to read what promised to be nothing less than a rousing military report. It was not too late in the day – only a few minutes past seven o'clock according to Alek's wristwatch – and far too early for his butler to be informing him about the imminence of his preferred dinnertime, which every servant in his employ knew about. This was an unexpected interruption, and for a brief second, Alek felt a surge of annoyance that he quickly suppressed; it was unfair to be mad at someone whose intentions he knew nothing about and after all, it was not as if whoever was the on other side of his office door was truly interrupting any work.

"_Your Highness_?" a voice called out from behind the thick wooden doors, muffled to the point where there were nearly no distinguishable features that audibly stood out to Alek. "_Urgent package from Vienna_."

Alek sighed. It was likely none other than his parents, who were enjoying their early retirement at the expense of their only child and son. Having shed his responsibilities at a relatively young age due to a rough case of pneumonia, Franz Ferdinand left his son Konopiště, which had largely become the primary Hohenberg residence in the empire, and was quite content to take his wife, Alek's mother Sophie, on trips throughout Europe and the world after his recovery, often ending in Vienna to stay for weeks to months at a time before embarking on their next sightseeing journey. Over the past two years, Alek had accumulated no small number of knick-knacks and doodads that his parents had picked up over the course of their travels, ranging from exotic tomes to eccentric mechanical contraptions whose only discernable purpose seemed to be to befuddle the logical mind. This was no doubt the latest product of their voyages.

"_Come in_," Alek uttered, a tone of exasperation barely hidden. While he was somewhat annoyed with the parents he dearly loved, it would do him no good for anyone else to find out about such tension, even if grossly overstated and exaggerated. Even in the recesses of his own palace, Alek felt eyes on him wherever he went, and he knew without a doubt that any juicy piece of gossip about Europe's most eligible bachelor was likely to spread like wildfire across the continent. Before the door opened, he quickly did a once-over to ensure he was presentable. His outfit for the day, a tailored suit for which he discarded the tie some hours earlier, was more or less in order – he disregarded the unbuttoned top button since it was late in the day and he could not be bothered with it. His hair, as he glanced toward a small vanity mirror positioned on the wall to his right, was still proper, and overall, he looked presentable, if not ready for a royal ball.

The door to Alek's right opened to just less than a forty-five-degree angle as a young man, dressed properly as a servant in the Hohenberg's service, slid into the office with a nondescript brown package. Alek frowned slightly as the servant, whose name he seemed to recall as David, failed to close the door behind him, but it was a small mistake that he decided to overlook.

"_What is it_?" the prince asked, clasping his hands together as he put his elbows on his desk.

"_I-I'm not sure, Your Highness_," the servant, David, replied, slightly stuttering as he spoke. "_It has the seal, so we brought it straight up for you_."

Alek could now note that David had a rather light and melodic voice. It was a voice accented like in a way Alek had not quite heard before, though there were many strange accents in the rural parts of the empire that he had never heard in his lifetime thus far, and as he glanced up and down to assess his servant, he further noted David's slim build, short blond hair, angular facial features, and rather short height. Perhaps most notable was the servant's blue eyes, piercing and stunning in brilliance. Alek blinked at that; even for a man that considered himself quite orthodox when it came to _those_ matters, he had to admit they were quite attractive. For someone that looked no older than Alek himself and was not possibly much younger, David was small even compared to Alek's slim build, standing half a head shorter than Alek's own one-point-seventy-eight meters in height. A rather androgynous young man, Alek thought, as he absentmindedly nodded in response to David's words.

"_Not from my parents? Very well, then_." Alek rose up, pulling a small letter opener out of its holder with him as he rounded the side of his large and heavy oak table. "_Let's see what Vienna has sent us_." He took the small box from David's loose hands and, noting the official Imperial seal denoting its origin from a government source in Vienna, cut through the rope that held the package closed. He absentmindedly tossed the letter opener onto his desk as he opened the flaps of the box with a single hand. Ignoring the sensation of David leaning in from curiosity, Alek peered into the box.

The little click that accompanied the opening of the box scarcely registered to Alek, but the sight that he saw certainly did. Tightly packed inside of the box, with plenty of packing paper on all four sides of it, sat a single short stick of dynamite with a fuse that led to a small contraption on the lid of the box. A contraption that had seemingly been set off by Alek opening the box and had led to the click.

And the click was none other than the fuse being set.

Alek heard a gasp from the corner of his ear. Before he could even think, an arm wrapped around his chest and flung him with surprising force across the smooth surface of his desk, flinging papers and pens everywhere as he fell off the other side of the desk between the hard oak wood and his heavy leather chair. Disoriented, he saw David fall off the edge of the desk and onto the seat of the leather chair, with his back barely flush with the surface of the desk. His bright, blue eyes were wide as he stared at Alek, with both of his hands on his ears

In that last moment, Alek barely had the presence of mind to put his own hands over his ears, and it was not a moment too early.

The explosion was still deafening through his hands, and Alek felt his body roughly pushed by the force of the small blast, forcing his face into the soft leather of the chair seat before he fell to the ground.

Alek lay there for quite a few moments, his head ringing and his body feeling like it had just been internally stirred and mixed. He could feel a myriad of tiny cuts on his hands, forearms, and face, and he groaned as he pushed himself up only to feel a dull pain in his back. Coughing from the dust and soot that the air was lined with, he forced his eyes open.

The office was completely dark now, with the bomb having blown the elaborate chandelier that hung from ceiling into a thousand tiny shards of glass, and a cool breeze blew through the newly-created hole in his office where there had once been a window obscured by a heavy curtain. As Alek shakily stood up, he took note of his heavy desk, which saw its surface pockmarked by a multitude of small scratches but otherwise stood undamaged. Of course, it was a very solid desk that had been bolted to the ground to avoid any movement, and Alek had half a mind to find the craftsman who manufactured it and raise them to nobility. In front of the desk, where he had stood just half a minute earlier, was a small blackened crater in the middle of the hardwood flooring, with the package little more than ash and burnt paper scraps. It was quite fortunate that the room was so large and that it did not contain the blast and amplify its power to the detriment of the office's occupants.

As Alek's ears began to stop ringing, he remembered that he was not the sole occupant of the room nor the desk being sturdy even the real reason why he had survived. A quiet whimper alerted Alek to his savior, and he quickly turned – ignoring the dull throb of pain that brought to his sore body – to see his overturned chair, which had been blown backward ninety degrees and lay on its back. On it lay his servant David, whose body was sprawled perpendicularly over the chair's high leather back.

Even if Alek had it bad, David had him squarely beat in terms of pain experienced. The small black vest that the servants of the palace wore was ripped to shreds, and much of David's exposed skin was either marred by red blood or black soot. Alek quickly kneeled by his servant's side, and blanched when he saw the golden handle of his letter opener protruding from the servant's right shoulder. Granted, it was not deeply embedded into David's flesh, but the small pool of blood that was starting to accumulate, a stark contrast to the otherwise solid white of the shirt underneath. Alek hastily ripped a strip of cloth from the left side of what was left of the black vest.

David's eyes flickered open, the blue blinking in a dazed manner as the servant struggled to re-orient.

"Bloody hell," David muttered, his voice soft and raspy, "it all hurts."

Alek scrunched his eyebrows in confusion, his hands, which held the strip of black cloth, frozen above the golden handle of the letter opener.

Alek himself was Austrian. They were in Austria-Hungary. Presumably, everyone in his employ was, if not Austrian, close enough to not be easily distinguishable.

Yet his injured servant, who should have been, by all indicators, a young Austrian man, had just spoken _English_, and with a distinctly British accent, no less. Where from Britain, Alek could not pinpoint, but it was too messy, for lack of a better word, to be the prim and proper English accent of the British upper class that he had interacted with to a substantial degree over the past few years, and it was clearly from somewhere in the Isles.

David's eyes fell onto Alek, and the servant inhaled sharply before coughing a few times.

"_Your Highness_," the servant uttered, but before he could continue, Alek held up a hand.

"_Don't speak,_" Alek replied. "_You are injured_." David nodded. Alek slung looked at the cloth he clutched in one hand and thought better of his idea, instead putting one arm around the small of David's back. He heaved a little to lift his servant.

_"We need to get you some medical attention_," Alek continued. "_There should be help coming so–_," he cut off at the sudden staccato sound that echoed loudly from outside his office doors.

Gunfire. Alek's heart pounded loudly in his chest as he considered the possibilities. There were not many to think of. A bombing attempt and gunfire in his palace – the two of them together suggested only one real possibility.

Someone was trying to assassinate him.

Alek gently lay David back down on the soft leather of fallen chair as he considered his options. If there was gunfire in his palace, then there were enemies inside that would not hesitate to gun him down if given the chance. His security team, if it was not already infiltrated and compromised, was likely busy, and the lack of anyone coming to help after an obvious explosion was a damning testament to how many allies Alek still had in his own abode. He looked back down at David, who was taking deep breaths as he winced from the pain of something being impaled in him.

"_I think I that it's not too deep to take out here_," Alek whispered. "_I am going to pull it out and wrap this around your shoulder_. _Hopefully that will be enough_." Warding off a feeble one-armed attempt to stop him, Alek unbuttoned David's white shirt to better see the wound and bandage it. He expected some scratches and cuts on David's chest, among potential bruises and other wounds.

He did not expect extensive chest wrappings.

Alek blinked a few times, trying to understand what it meant. Out of perhaps just sheer curiosity, he slowly moved one hand toward the top of the wrappings without thinking, subconsciously piecing together what they meant. David's right hand weakly clasped onto Alek's own, and Alek looked David in the eyes.

"_Please, don't_."

Those two words rang out in the otherwise silent air, and Alek froze for a few seconds before he quickly nodded and pulled his hand back. Ignoring how smooth the skin now felt with his newfound knowledge as his hands glided over it, he pulled back the shirt enough to expose where the letter opener was embedded in David's flesh.

Without any warning, Alek pulled out the letter opener, its first inch slick with David's blood, and ignored the gasp that it elicited from the servant as he pressed on the wound with his hands. He tried his best to ignore the red that was staining his hands, for once thankful for the mandatory training he had been forced to go through as a royal heir. Otherwise, he would have had no idea what he needed to do.

When the blood stopped accumulating, Alek grabbed the torn piece of cloth and tightly wrapped it around the wound, making sure that it was putting pressure on David's shoulder as he tied its ends into a knot. He did his best to ignore the chest wrappings as pulled back.

"That should be enough for now," Alek muttered to his servant. "How does it feel?"

"It's okay," David rasped, struggling to rise to their feet. David glanced outside the broken glass of the window before turning back to Alek. "What's going on…"

David's words died in their throat at the sight of Alek's gun, its barrel reflecting the last hints of the sun as it set beyond the horizon. The impassive expression on Alek's face as he stood beside the open drawer of his desk was warning enough to David to stay silent.

"So what are you?" Alek spat out in his mildly accented English. "British intelligence? Are the English so badly after my life?"

David tried to raise both arms up, wincing as their right one failed to cooperate and instead just carrying through with the left. "I swear," David began, slipping into a sort of neutral English accent that was devoid of the exotic tone that David had sworn in earlier, "I'm not here to hurt you."

Alek's grim face did not change. "And what about them?" he asked, waving generally behind him. "Are they here to hurt me?"

"I don't know who they are," David whispered, shaking their head. "I swear, I don't."

"You just brought me a bomb," Alek scathingly replied.

"And I saved your life the moment I realized."

Alek paused, blinking a few times.

"And your chest?" It was less an accusation than a genuine question, but 'David' nonetheless flinched at Alek's tone. He was not sure why he decided to ask – the answer was fairly evident.

"I'm a gi–"

Before 'David' could finish, however, a heavy kick rattled the door. Alek whipped around and pointed his gun at office doors, his left arm instinctively rising to ward 'David' to safety behind him. A second kick knocked the already-damaged door off of its hinge, and Alek nearly fired his gun before the voice rang out.

"_Your Highness!" _the voice cried. Its owner rushed into the ruined office with a handful of soldiers, each armed with a rifle.

"_Hans_," Alek smiled as he walked forward. Hans was an army officer nearing forty years of age, and he had served the Hohenbergs for over a decade, serving as Alek's father's head of security before his own. His smile dropped as he remembered the danger and the uncertainties of who stood with him. "_How do I know I can trust you_?"

Hans grimaced at the hidden accusation but nodded. "_It is hard to prove my loyalty right now, Your Highness. We have had betrayals tonight, but I promise, on my family's honor, that I would die for you before I would see you come to harm_."

Alek sighed and lowered his gun. There was not much else he could do – should Hans had been a traitor, Alek had no chance against him and his men anyway.

"_What is the situation_?" Alek asked.

"_There are many enemies in the palace_," Hans nearly snarled, "_I believe that some of my men were compromised_. _I deeply apologize for my errors_."

Alek waved it off. _"How are your forces holding_?" he further questioned, walking forward with the man toward the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed 'David' following them.

"_We are losing ground because they outnumber us_," Hans muttered in response. _"But at least we still have control of this sector. If we make our way to the back, I have a car and driver waiting for you_."

Alek nodded. "_Lead the way_."

Alek, Hans, 'David', and four other soldiers carefully made their way through the massive palace, ending near a kitchen that exited to the back of the estate. Filtering out of the small backdoor, Alek had to crack a small smile at the sight of a car, its engine at a low rumble, waiting to take him to safety.

"_There we are_," Hans whispered, a note of relief evident in his voice. He, like Alek, had a smile.

The smile was wiped from his face as the car exploded in a brilliant fireball, sending pieces of metal flying through the air and onto the pristine lawn of the Hohenberg estate.

"_Goddamn_!" Hans swore under his breath before turning to Alek. "_To the garage_. _There may be another vehicle you can take_." Before he could fully turn and order his soldiers to follow, a crack echoed through the air, ending in the gurgling of a soldier standing by Alek. Horrified, Alek saw the young man clutch at his bleeding throat, the life draining from eyes as he slowly and painfully died.

"_Quick!_" Hans yelled, rushing Alek and 'David' back to the kitchen backdoor. He looked at 'David'. "_You_! _Protect his Highness from harm with your life_!" 'David' nodded rapidly.

Hans gestured at one of the soldiers. "_Karl_! _Follow the prince and make sure he gets to safety_! _We'll hold them off here and buy you some time_." Before Alek could give any response or counter-order, Hans turned around, pistol in hand, and fired wildly back into the adjacent building where the first shot had come from.

Alek could not help but feel a small amount of relief at the thought of a soldier accompanying them. 'David' was still an entity that he was unsure about, and even though he – no, she – had not done anything to harm him yet, he had no idea what her end objective was. A trustworthy Austrian armed with a rifle by his side gave Alek a little more confidence in his safety.

"_Let's go, Your Highness_," Karl the Austro-Hungarian soldier spoke up, gesturing for the prince to follow him back into the kitchen. "_We should move quickly to get to the garage_." Alek nodded and walked past the soldier with 'David' behind him and Karl behind them both, moving back through the maze of rooms into the main foyer of the palace. Dead bodies lay everywhere, with both field-grey and nondescript black-clad bodies littering the ground, with bullet holes, casings, and small amounts of rubble between. It was, however, quiet and devoid of life other than them.

"_Looks like the fighting's moved past here_," Karl commented from behind them. "_No one here except us_."

"_Looks like it_," Alek replied, not bothering to turn around as he gingerly stepped over a dead body dressed in the standard Austrian field-grey.

A grunt and cry – two separate sounds from two different people – caused Alek to whip backward to the sources of the sounds, and he only turned fast enough to see Karl, with his rifle slung over a shoulder and each hand on each of 'David's shoulders, harshly tossing the servant out of the way onto the ground. 'David' hit the ground with a whimper as she clutched her right shoulder, her face scrunched up out of pain. Alek pistol, which he had almost fully turned on Karl, was knocked out of his hand by the stock of Karl's rifle.

"_What is this?_" Alek yelled, stepping back as Karl leveled his rifle at Alek's chest.

"_A necessary fire for Austria's future_," the soldier replied impassively, taking aim. He began to depress the trigger, and Alek closed his eyes, unwilling to watch what was to come.

A single gunshot echoed loudly throughout the vast chamber.

Alek's eyes remained closed for a few seconds as he stared into the darkness. Then he frowned. His body was not nearly as cold as he imagined it would when the time came. He felt around his chest, but did not feel anything resembling wet, warm blood or a bullet hole. In fact, he did not feel any undue pain that he imagined would come with a fatal gunshot wound. He opened his eyes.

In front of Alek, Karl's body lay crumpled on the ground, a pool of blood beginning to form around the man's corpse. Alek's jaw dropped slightly at the sight as he took it in. Then his brain finally caught up and he turned to 'David', who still lay on the ground. However, instead of moaning in pain like she was before, the would-be servant was quite still. Her blue eyes stared straight back at Alek. Her gun – the one that had been knocked out of Alek's hand and which she now held in her left hand – was still pointed toward Karl.

Alek gulped. "_Who are you_?" he uttered.

'David' huffed as she got back up, tossing the pistol toward Alek, who caught it with some fumbling. She eyed the prince critically, flicking her eyes from his boots to his head.

"I'm Deryn," she said. She strode over to Karl's dead body. With her good left hand, she reached down and grabbed Karl's rifle, slinging it over her left shoulder as she rummaged around the dead soldier's belt. Finding two five-round clips, she pocketed them before standing up and looking at Alek.

"Well?" Deryn sarcastically questioned in English. "Shall we get a move on?"

Alek was instantly reminded of her British origin and the distinct lack of loyalty she held to Austria-Hungary – and indirectly, himself – but squashed his fear. She had, after all, saved his life a second time at a point in Alek's life when even his supposed own soldiers were turning on him. If she ended up killing him now, it would have been a monumental waste of time on her part, so out of some ironic twist of fate, Alek now felt safer with the Briton than with any Austrian.

"_Yes, we should_," Alek quickly replied, moving toward the door positioned on the side of the foyer that led to the extensive garage. Before he could open the door, however, Deryn extended an arm to block his movement, before gesturing for silence and grabbing the pistol out of his hands. He pasted an indignant look on his face but otherwise cooperated, since she seemed to know what she was doing compared to him.

Deryn slowly pushed open the door to the garage with her left arm, pistol ready to fire on any threat. There was no movement or, indeed, any sound in the garage, and so when she slipped into the large complex of vehicles, she found no enemies. She also found no cars.

"Stormwalkers," Deryn spat, seeing the famous, or in her case infamous, Clanker weapons of war neatly parked in a row. There were four units that sat in the garage, with the first being a more decorative unit in grey, black, and white while two others were gunmetal grey and the fourth was a green and brown mix.

"My personal unit," Alek pointed, barely noticing that he had slipped into English. It was more habit than anything, because the only times he ever spoke English were when he was spoken to in English by diplomats and the like.

"No," Deryn flatly said, causing Alek to pause and turn with a glare in his eyes. "It's way too obvious. We take the last one." She pointed at the green and brown unit. "It'll blend better in the forest."

Alek wanted to retort, but found her logic impeccable, so instead he bit on his lower lip and acquiesced, climbing up the metal rope ladder into the stormwalker's cockpit. Behind him, Deryn handed him her taken Gewehr 98, which he stowed behind one of the seats, and helped her up the ladder.

"You know how to move this thing?" Deryn asked, sliding into one of the back seats.

"I've piloted stormwalkers before," Alek replied, starting the stormwalker's powerful dual engines. The kerosene smell they emitted caused Deryn to scrunch her nose, but she stayed silent as Alek eased the machine out of the garage. Even with the sound of the engines and the stormwalker's pneumatics, the faint echo of gunfire could still be heard behind them as they slipped into the Czech forests under the cover of night.

"Where are we going? Switzerland?" Deryn asked from behind his seat.

"No," Alek responded. "To get to Switzerland, we would have to pass through Germany or by Vienna, neither of which are good options right now. We are going east. There, Austrian patrols will be weaker in the forests."

A silence fell over the cockpit for a few moments.

"There is a medical kit in the back," Alek commented. He heard Deryn shuffle to grab it. You should sterilize the wound and replace the banda–"

"I know what to do," Deryn replied brusquely, cutting him off.

"Just checking." Alek shook his head slightly as he guided the stormwalker through the forest. By now, the moon was fully out, and it provided just the bare amount of illumination needed for Alek to easily maneuver between trees and other foliage.

He clenched his jaw as the full impact of the day's events hit him. Someone had tried to kill him. He was now alone with what appeared to be a British spy. His list of allies seemed to be disturbingly short, and his list of enemies appeared to be infinite. If his guess was correct, the order for his death likely came from the top of the empire – maybe not Franz Joseph himself, seeing as how the man was nearing his deathbed and had long since burned out his distaste for Alek's mother Sophie as he became increasingly senile, but Alek had no shortage of competitors at court and to the throne, considering his father, having retired his duties as Archduke to Alek, was widely considered to have abdicated his position in line to the throne in favor of his son. Alek was the de facto heir apparent to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and there were many that would gain from his death.

It truly was irony. Alek was one of the most powerful men in Europe, yet now the only person he could seemingly count on was the woman that was redressing her wound behind him. A British spy, nonetheless.

Alek had no idea how this would end – whether he would live or die, whether he would find who had wanted him dead – but he was certain that it would be a test unlike any he had faced before.

And so, he piloted on into the night, long after he heard Deryn finally succumb to fatigue and entered a fitful sleep, leaving behind the only home he had ever known for a wilderness beyond the dominion of the Emperor, or the Kaiser, or even the King. By the machinations of others, he was cast out of the fruitful, prosperous land that he may have one day ruled, and marched onward to the east of Eden.


End file.
